"Mushrooms and meat, spinach and seafood, green tea and dairy…such
foods are most susceptible to radioactive contamination. Living in
Japan today, we know this. But suspicion of the very food we eat is
not a unique condition. Headlines just in the past month revealed
that 70% of Indian milk is contaminated with fillers like fertilizers and
detergents, that shiitake mushrooms grown near Tokyo were found to be highly
radioactive and that most ground beef sold in the US contains “pink
slime.” The illusive search for food that is definitively
nourishing has grown akin to that for the Holy Grail, the Sang Real.

What distinguishes food from waste, holy from ordinary, real from false,
saying grace from a simple act of faith? These are mysteries requiring
more effort to unscramble than most are willing to put forth. So raise
your glass, ladies and gentlemen, to the new era of nutritional chance,
tricks and illusions, wonders and edible mysteries."